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In this blog post I outline what you should not do and instead what options you have got to succeed with your Teams rollout to our business (end) users.

Drop and run (don’t!)

“OMG there’ll be a new chat software on my device? When? Today? What? Why? Another one? Do we not have enough? Why can I not stick with the old … it worked somehow …” Well, if you’ll hear these question from your end users something went wrong! You might missed a proper change management execution in regards of user adoption and training! The bad approach to roll out a new tool on device/s to end users is to

send users a single mail at the go live date,

tell them you’ll get a new tool

the new software tool gets installed

tool runs in the background (user maybe has not yet read your mail)

user does not really know how he/she has to use the tool

you’ll get flooded and busy receiving many tickets/complaints/questions regarding the new tool (if it is also telephony / the (soft) phone (system) you just changed you might get no calls because users are not aware how to call you)

you need to cope with the tickets …

your manager and other business stakeholder will complain

…

plummeting of productivity / revenue / profit (users are unable to work as expected)

no time for other projects and things which really add value to your business

…

Ouch!

Enable users for productivity, not just some Teams clients

In my experience, based on my consulting projects, I’m glad to notice (and tell you) that more and more companies from small to large focus also on user experience as critical success factor. So, to get users to adopt new technology and make them to leave a comfort zone you must help them to get them aboard the Teams client. That’s exactly what these companies do: They start to develop a user adoption and training strategy and initiate its execution. Mostly the user adoption and training does not end when the rollout ends. An user adoption program remains but the intensity and frequency of actions to drive adoption decrease but does not vanish. Office 365, Teams and the ecosystem is dynamic and someone needs to keep that in mind to keep users informed on minor and major changes as well as to help and find ways for the business to innovate and drive the company’s digital transformation. #livelonglearning #learningftw #adoptionftw

To reach excellent user experience you must execute a suited change management. What this looks like depends on your employees and users.There is no one-size-fits-all approach in my opinion. There are some common things to keep in mind, plan and execute but usually this is different from company-to-company.

It may help to involve someone from the marketing team because they can be supportive for internal project marketing to make users demanding Teams before it is even ready in your company.
Get in touch with your business stakeholders, demonstrate Teams, evangelize Teams and sell the added value which it brings to each user (group). Assuming that you consider to replace your existing telephony system (private branch exchange, pbx) and go from a legacy phone system to Teams direct routing you must plan a longer period for the change management! Migrating common information worker workloads to Teams plus telephony is a much bigger change (organizational / cultural change) for users. You will have discussions if you just want to quickly replace a legacy desk phone with a new fancy headset and soft client … you need to address this early enough and offer solutions on which users agree(ed) on. Just imagine you go to one employee and take away the phone from his/her desk which he/she used for maybe the last 20 years … and why do you still go in the office? Using Teams enables you for working from every spot around the globe where you have a sophisticated internet connection, e.g. home office, in the park, on the train, … where ever you like with many devices…
This culture is not yet common practice in many companies. There are still many companies tying information worker employees to their office desks. The final questions are why and is your corporate culture striving for this change?